She clasped her hands in silent entreaty, and her beautiful eyes looked up with love and humility to the face of her beloved but deeply-wronged husband.
"Helga, Helga," said he gravely, "is this how you have been faithful to your love and your promise?"
"Oh, do not be angry with me," begged Helga; "to your spirit-eye nothing has been hidden; you know how it all came about—how my anxiety for you drove me to seek you—how my father found me, and how I was going to show him our kingdom in order to set his mind at rest. You know that the gates were closed against me, and that I was borne back unconscious to my old home—that they kept me there by cleverly-invented stories, and that at last my father's entreaties forced me to the last and hardest step. But you know also that I have loved only you, that my heart is yours alone."
"Be judged by thine own words, O Flower of Iceland!" replied the fairy king quietly. "Why didst thou not listen to the voice of thy heart? We fairies know nothing of human weakness, therefore we cannot forgive it. Dost thou know the fate that now awaits thee, Helga?"
"I know it well," answered Helga firmly, "and if my mouth has been unfaithful, my heart has been true. I welcome death, for it will reunite me to you!"
Then a happy smile passed over the fairy king's noble countenance; he stretched out his arms, and pressed Helga dying to his heart.
Finding that his wife did not come back, Olaffson hastened with his father-in-law to the stranger's room. They found fair Helga in the fairy king's arms. Both were cold and dead; in the same moment both hearts had broken. Olaffson tried to take Helga away from the stranger's arms, but in vain. What life had robbed him of, he held in death with a grasp that could not be loosed.
"Leave them, my son," said the old grief-stricken father; "she is his by right. What has all our prudence done for us? Worse than nothing! The fairy king has reclaimed his own in spite of us."
They laid them in the same coffin, and next morning the soil of Iceland was to receive them into its cold lap. But in the night that followed this eventful day, sleep fell more heavily than usual on the eyes of the mourners. They did not hear the whispering of gentle voices or the hasty tread of many feet. They did not see the multitude of fairies who had assembled from all parts of the island to show the last honour to their beloved king. Noiselessly the spirits lifted the coffin, carried it out of the house, and away to the rock where fair Helga had begged in vain for admission.
To-day it was not denied her. The magic gates sprang open as the coffin approached. With drooping wings the white birds hovered round, and mourned the royal pair in notes of soft lamentation.